The Director of the Malaga Oceanographic Centre of IEO, Jorge Baro and their team visited ETC-UMA offices today to engage in an exchange towards potential areas of collaboration. To date, two projects will have been identified where both institutions could join forces, namely the SOSTPARK project for the Assessment of the sustainability of protected areas in Spain: Effects on the global sustainability of the territory; and the Interreg Med Horizontal Project PANACeA to streamline networking and management efforts in Mediterranean Protected Areas (PAs) as a mechanism to enhance nature conservation and protection in the region.
SOSTPARK is an applied research project within the Spanish Research, Development and Innovation Programme Focused on Societal Challenges to finalize in October 2018. SOSTPARK tries to answer the following research question: Are protected areas effective tools to ensure territorial sustainability in Spain? To answer it, the environmental, social, economic and governance effects of five terrestrial protected area networks and one marine protected area network will be analysed: Nature Reserves, National Parks, Nature Parks, Sites of Community Importance/Special Areas of Conservation, Special Protection Areas, and Marine Reserves.
PANACeA aims at ensuring synergies between relevant Mediterranean stakeholders –including managers, policymakers, socio-economic actors, civil society and the scientific community –, and to increase the visibility and impacts of their projects’ results towards common identified strategical targets. The main thematic focus areas include coastal and marine management, biodiversity monitoring, sustainable use of natural resources, management of protected areas, global changes, governance, cooperation and scientific and innovative methodologies, under the umbrella of a series of projects: ACT4LITTER (marine waste in marine protected areas), AMAre (marine spatial planning and PAs), CONFISH (network of fish stock recovery areas), ECOSUSTAIN (water quality monitoring solutions in protected wetlands), FishMPABlue2 (governance of artisanal fisheries in protected ares), MEDSEALITTER (marine waste management), MPA-ADAPT (adaptation of MPAs to climate change), POSBEMED (strategy for joint management of Posidonia beaches and dunes), WETNET (wetland governance) and additional projects to be included in the coming period.
Watch our news for future developments on this and other collaborations to better protect Mediterranean biodiversity and ecosystems.